Paper towels are commonly used for a variety of purposes, such as for drying a person's hands after they have been washed. One common paper towel dispenser includes an upper cabinet that holds pre-folded paper towels and a lower cabinet for storing used paper towels prior to their disposal. The upper cabinet includes a bottom plate having an elongated hole where paper towels can be removed manually from the cabinet. Typically this type of paper towel dispenser is completely recessed into a wall structure, such as a restroom wall in the vicinity of a restroom sink.
This type of paper towel dispenser has a number of disadvantages. One disadvantage with these dispensers is that pre-folded paper towel is relatively expensive, because it must be pre-cut to the desired length, folded, and packaged, all of which adds to manufacturing costs as compared to rolled paper towel. Another disadvantage is that these dispensers will sometimes dispense more than one sheet of pre-folded paper towel at a time, whether the user intended to take more than one sheet or not. Either way, the additional paper results in greater amounts of waste. The pre-folded paper design increases the amount of waste because the paper is often not fully unfolded before use. As a result, more towels are often taken by a user than would be necessary if the paper towels were each fully unfolded.
An associated concern with multiple towels that are often dispensed at once is the problem of clogging. When a user grasps a towel, the towel will become wet and may tear when the user attempts to pull it out. The combination of tearing towels and multiple towels being pulled out sometimes leads to clogging of the dispenser, making it difficult to remove a towel and also resulting in more waste. Another factor that leads to clogging is the amount of folded paper towel stacked in the upper cabinet. The greater the stack size, the greater the downward forces applied that press the bottom-most towel against the bottom plate, which makes it more difficult to remove the towel without tearing.
Attempts have been made to solve these problems with existing recessed paper towel dispensers (e.g. those that dispense individually cut and folded paper towels) by retrofitting existing paper towel dispensers with paper towel dispensers that utilize paper towel rolls. These attempts have themselves caused certain disadvantages. Retrofitting an existing paper towel dispenser requires that significant modifications to the existing cabinet be made. Typical wall mounted paper towel dispensers use covers or housings as well as large paper towel rolls (e.g., 7.5 inches to 10 inches in diameter and 7.5 inches to 10 inches in width) that are too wide and too large in diameter to fit within the existing cabinet completely. As a result, the cabinet door must be removed to allow the dispenser to extend out from the cabinet. In addition, the bottom plate must also be removed so as to not interfere with the bottom of the dispenser, and the dispensing of the rolled paper. Finally, additional trim pieces are typically required to cover the edges between the recessed cabinet and the cover or housing of the rolled paper towel dispenser.